TUJ holds 2015 Student Film Festival on April 3

Temple University, Japan Campus (TUJ) will hold its annual student film festival on campus on Friday, April 3rd. The festival will feature nine short films, all of which have been filmed, edited and captioned by TUJ students. The productions with various themes and genres by students of different nationalities will be on view to the general public. The event is open to everyone and is free of charge. All films will have either Japanese or English subtitles.

This film festival has been held since 2005 as part of the curriculum of the Communications Studies course. For students, who produce the event from the call for entries and film selection to promotion and event management on the day, it is an invaluable learning experience. There are 11 students enrolled in this course in the 2015 spring semester. Student evaluation for the course is based on such points as subtitling, event planning and execution, and management. There is a public call for film entries on campus and any TUJ student can apply, and of the more than 25 films submitted this year, nine works of great individuality were selected. In addition to Japan and the U.S., this year’s filmmakers come from Brazil, Italy, Colombia and the Philippines. Course instructor Karl Neubert says, “Most of this year’s films stay away from politics and focus on personal themes such as love and relationships. Today, with information from around the world available instantly and from person to person, students find politics to be rather distant, and they tend to focus on topics that seem more connected to their daily life.”

On the day of the festival, screenwriter and director Daisuke Hosaka will be returning as a guest reviewer, as he was last year.